This guest blog is part of a series of articles written by Mount Allison students, as part of a partnership between Nature NB and the Applied Native Plants and Pollinator Conservation course. Thanks to Dr. Emily Austen and the students for this ongoing collaboration!
Pearly Everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea) is an excellent addition to any home garden. These attractive, low-maintenance plants encourage pollinators to visit your home, benefitting both your garden as a whole and the larger ecosystem.
Native wildflowers are our environment’s naturally occurring flowering plants. These plants evolved and grew alongside other plants and animals, such as pollinators, perfecting a fragile balance with each other that helped the ecosystem run properly. Verbena hastata, or Blue Vervain, is one such native wildflower. You may be familiar with these spires topped by purple flowers from driving past them in roadside ditches or from evening walks in wetlands and meadows. Blue Vervain plays an important role in our ecosystem as a popular stop for pollinators like bees, and as a stopgap for methane emissions in wetlands.
If you’ve ever spent time exploring the first wildflowers to bloom around your home in the early-Spring, you’ve probably seen some wild bees that look similar to bumblebees. But, these bees are much too slender, and typically much too small to be bumblebees. These bees were likely mining bees.
